The Ritual of Pride
Instead of making offers to the land to ensure an abundance of grain we are instead planting seeds of hope to sustain us through the next year. We celebrate our continued survival in the face of systems and ideologies that would seek to erase and destroy us, and mourn those we have lost to violence and oppression. We lift up our dead in prayer, song, dance, sex, and celebration to ensure their stories carry on.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theater director. He is considered one of the most important Spanish poets of the 20th century. He was a member of the Generation of ‘27, which was a group of poets who brought modern European artistic movements into Spanish literature. During the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s he toured rural Spain and put on free theatrical shows of classical Spanish theatre before being arrested by Nationalist militias and assassinated.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Tryals of Thomas Vaughan and Thomas Davis
Glory holes. Arguably one of the most recognizable cultural artifacts of contemporary gay culture due to it's relationship to cruising and anonymous sex, something that marked the reality of the gay male experience in the Western world for centuries. When loving the person you want, either romantically or physically, is against the law and can land you in prison, an asylum, or worse, you find ways to satisfy your needs as safely and discreetly as possible.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood was an author, diarist, playwright, screenwriter, and autobiographer. He is best known for A Single Man, his semi-autobiographical novel Goodbye to Berlin which inspired the musical Cabaret, and his memoir Christopher and His Kind which connected him with the ongoing gay liberation movement.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight - Homomonument
The Homomonument is the first monument in the world to commemorate those in the LGBTQ+ community who were killed by the Nazis, and has since become a symbol for everyone who has been persecuted because of their sexual orientation.
Book Review: Queer Qabala
When Enfys Book reached out and asked if I would be willing to write a review for their upcoming book, Queer Qabala: Nonbinary, Genderfluid, Omnisexual Mysticism & Magick, I jumped at the opportunity! While Qabala is not something I’m terribly familiar with or incorporate into my personal practice I am always excited to see how the LGBTQ+ community is “queering” traditional practices.
Personal: Reflections from the Red Dragon Feast
Over the weekend I was able to attend my first DC Red Dragon Feast and it was such an incredible experience. This is a queer magical ritual which began on the West Coast in the 1980s. This ongoing spell was first brought into being as a way to bring hope during the early days of the HIV/AIDS pandemic with the goal of focusing this energy towards finding a cure. It has since been expanded to include all blood-borne diseases.
Personal: Queer Druidry
I’m a native Floridian. I will always consider myself a Florida Boy and will always love my swamps. I also grew up in the time before same-sex marriage equality, under the shadow of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, when the only thing a closeted teen like myself knew about being gay was violence and disease and isolation - because those were the only stories being told. That’s why what is currently happening in Florida is so deeply personal and deeply troubling for me.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: El Baile De Los Cuarenta y Uno
El baile de los cuarenta y uno, or ‘The Dance of the Forty-One’, refers to a social scandal in early 20th century Mexico. As with many aspects of queer society in this era this event revolves around a police raid of a private home during a dance at which 19 men were dressed in drag. The Mexican government attempted to suppress discussion of this event since it involved elite members of society but it became heavily satirized in the Mexican press and media. Some, such as writer Carlos Monsiváis, refer to this event as the invention of homosexuality in Mexico.
Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Matthew Shepard
This month’s Queer Ancestor Spotlight is deeply personal to me. The story and legacy of Matthew Shepard’s death functions almost as bookends to my coming out process and finding affirming queer community. I was just starting to realize I was not exactly like my other male friends when Matthew’s death became a national story. I traveled the inner journey of coming out to myself while his death rippled through the politics of the United States. I came out publicly shortly before the act bearing Matthew’s name codified sexual orientation and gender identity in federal hate crime law. And I found myself on the other side of the historic legalization of same-sex marriage as a married gay man, surrounded and supported by queer community in the Washington National Cathedral as we gathered to celebrate the life and legacy of Matthew as his ashes were finally laid to rest.